Wednesday, 1 August 2007

Now this is in no way reflective of the Catholic Church as a whole, but it's difficult not to raise a smile when a man of the cloth is caught red-handed misbehaving. Reverend Monsignor Geoff Baron, the dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, has just been suspended after a video was posted on YouTube of him entering into a foul-mouthed racist rant at some teenage skateboarders trespassing on his church's property.

In the video the large group of teenagers deliberately taunt Reverend Baron, even accusing him of being a paedophile, but there's absolutely no defence for what follows as he launches into a screaming tirade which includes some extremely choice language and some despicable racist slurs.

The incident happened over a year ago but it just goes to show that, in this age of camera phones YouTube, misdemeanours can easily come back to bite people at a later date. And that includes Catholic Priests. The Pope must be very disappointed in him.